In the Image of the Creator ©
Reverend Janet Parsons
Gloucester UU Church
May 14, 2023
Yesterday, while procrastinating, I checked in online to see how my minister colleagues were doing. We often start commiserating on Saturdays about our writing process, how we feel about the emerging sermons, assuring each other that of course, it will all be fine. And one colleague commented yesterday that things were coming along very slowly, and that if he knew his muse’s address, he would send them a cappuccino.
There are often comments about muses – especially waiting for them to show up. From time to time someone will say that their muse showed up early, and now they were done, and they hoped the muse would head off to find another of the colleagues.
So this understanding of the muses coming and going prompted me to reply to my colleague and tell them that apparently muses move around a lot and don’t seem to have an address.
Since ancient times we humans have enjoyed thinking that during times when we struggle – whether we’re trying to find the right words, or to design a piece of art or to compose a piece of music, when we struggle – we like to think that there is something or somebody out there that might show up in time to help us.
The ancient Greeks invented the name Muse for these beings. In Greek mythology Muses were the nine daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne, the goddess of Memory. These nine goddesses, with names such as Calliope, Clio, Euterpe, Terpsichore, personified the arts and literature, and were believed to inspire creation. Over time each Muse became associated with a particular form of art, be it poetry or music, or history.
The ancient Romans also believed in presences that existed outside of humans. The name the Romans used for these presences was Geniuses. Individual places had geniuses, such as theaters, or vineyards, and even houses. They were seen as protective forces, guardians. They would follow people throughout their lives, something like a guardian angel. A genius, then, had nothing to do with human intelligence or skill or talent. It was something like an assistant that hovered nearby and helped the course of a creative endeavor. If we were to think of creating – painting, sculpting, composing, writing – as giving birth to something new, I think of geniuses and Muses as the midwives: guiding and providing inspiration.
Enter the Renaissance – that period of intellectual growth and ferment in Europe from roughly the 13th and 14th centuries into the 17th century. This era encompassed the Protestant Reformation, the return to study of Greek and Roman classical literature, and to an emergence of science. The study of astronomy, of human anatomy, and the beginning of exploration of other continents all had their roots in this lengthy period of intellectual pursuit.
One of the major developments that took place during the Renaissance was the growth of humanism. Rather than focusing on the presence of the holy, whether the Christian Trinity or the many gods and goddesses in the Greek and Roman pantheons, scholars began to emphasize the abilities of human beings. Just as an aside, humanism doesn’t mean the rejection of all belief in divinity. Humanism refers to the practice of centering human life, of treating humans and their activities and abilities as more important, as having the most impact on our daily lives. As a result of this new emphasis on humanity, people came to believe that all creativity came from within individuals, not from the assistance of gods and goddesses or geniuses. As the author Elizabeth Gilbert put it in a TED talk, “there was no more room for mystical creatures that take dictation from the divine.” (https://www.ted.com/talks/elizabeth_gilbert_your_elusive_creative_genius/transcript)
According to Ms. Gilbert, it was around this time that people began to refer to others not as having a genius, but rather, as being a genius.
Elizabeth Gilbert objects to this change in thinking. She told the story of the musician Tom Waits to illustrate the burden of feeling as though all of our creativity, our genius comes from some sort of well deep within us. She said, “I think that allowing somebody, one mere person, to believe that he or she is like, the vessel, you know, like the font and the essence and the source of all divine, creative, unknowable, eternal mystery is just a smidge too much responsibility to put on one fragile, human psyche. It’s like asking someone to swallow the sun. It just completely warps and distorts egos, and it creates all these unmanageable expectations about performance.” (Ibid.)
I hope that this roomful of all of you artists and makers, you composers, you writers, and today, being Mother’s Day, all of you who have had a hand in birthing humans or raising them, might hear Ms. Gilbert’s words and allow yourselves to feel just a little bit of relief. Perhaps it’s not all on you. Perhaps there is a creative force of some sort out there that can offer a lift when we feel stuck.
Last week we began to touch on the question of where creativity comes from. It’s clear from our brief look at ancient history and culture that this has been a question that has animated humans for thousands of years, and probably always will. And to this day, literally, when we find ourselves struggling to create, we find ourselves wishing that some sort of supernatural force would waft into the room, into our heads, and guide us into birthing something new. After hundreds of years of humanism, we still have that impulse.
It’s daunting to stare at that blank piece of paper, that blank canvas, that lump of clay on a potter’s wheel and to feel entirely responsible for creating something. It’s entirely natural that we find ourselves hoping for a little help from outside of ourselves.
And this leads us to a consideration of the nature of the divine. Of God. One of the names often given to God is the Creator. “The Creator loves pizzazz,” wrote Annie Dillard in our reading earlier. And then we are told in the Book of Genesis that God created humans in God’s image. “Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness;” God was quoted as saying.
And we grow up thinking that that means – what? Maybe we simply think it means that we look like God? It’s very easy to get all tangled up thinking about what this says about the nature and form of God, and then, of humans. How can we look like God? And if God created all humans in God’s likeness, then why do people so often refer to God as male?
Rather than trying to make sense of this, it’s easier, as we get older, to simply stop believing in a God that over time has ended up being made by humans in a human image. Although the words in the Book of Genesis say that God created humankind in God’s image, the representations we are offered of God are quite the opposite: the descriptions are clearly our attempts to define God in a human image. But, if we reject the idea that God actually looks like us, and that God thinks like us, then what’s left of God?
Perhaps you’re thinking, “Nothing.”
In the 20th century, and continuing on into the 21st, theologians began to find new ways to conceptualize the nature of the divine. As we learned more and more about science and the natural workings of the cosmos, old understandings and beliefs of the nature of the divine felt inadequate. We saw this in the writings of Henry Nelson Wieman, back in 1946, in his book The Source of Human Good. Wieman thought of God as a creative process, as the source of transformation. This process could not come from within people, but was a force that acted upon people that they then responded to. And the result was what Wieman called created good. It’s important to highlight that Wieman was not saying that this creative process comes from God. No. Our human word, God, is the name we use for the creative process.
We spend so much time dividing the holy into small pieces. We talk about Grace, and Love, and muses, and genius, we talk about the Holy Spirit, as though somehow all of these elements are separate from divinity, or just aspects of it. But what if all these are just names for the same thing: one creative force, a generative force that exists throughout the cosmos, and is available to all to support life and health and growth?
According to contemporary theologian Matthew Fox, the Hebrew word ‘Dabhar’ was translated by early Biblical scholars to mean Word. The Word of God. But Fox insists that Dabhar means ‘the creative energy of God.’ There it is again – the creative energy.
And Matthew Fox asks us: “What follows from all this? What is our human response along our spiritual journey? First, an awareness that there is one flow, one divine energy, one divine word in the sense of one creative energy flowing through all things, all time, all space. We are part of that flow and we need to listen to it rather than to assume arrogantly that our puny words are the only words of God.” (Matthew Fox, Original Blessing, p. 38-39.)
Matthew Fox goes on to offer a new translation of the opening of the Gospel of John:
In the beginning was the Creative Energy:
The Creative Energy was with God
And the Creative Energy was God…
The Creative Energy was the true light
That enlightens all people;
And it was coming into the world.” (Ibid., p. 40.)
My friends, we live our lives in a constantly unfolding miracle. And since ancient times, we have tried to understand our place and our role in this miracle, in the creative force, the life-giving force, that flows in us and around us. What comes from within us, and what is offered from outside us?
People have tried to answer this question of where our creative impulses come from, from the earliest times. We have held on to some of that thinking – the wishing for help from Muses, from Geniuses, from guardian angels, from God. Our understanding might have evolved over the millennia, but we can still find ourselves holding hope for something larger than ourselves, something from outside us to guide our hands and hearts.
What if, instead of believing that there is a God somewhere who sends us the creativity we need and hope for, we could feel that creative energy, and call it God?
“Ponder this thing in your heart; ponder with awe…
This is the wonder of time, this is the marvel of space; out of the stars swung the earth; life upon earth rose to love.
This is the marvel of life, rising to see and to know;
Out of your heart, cry wonder: sing that we live.”
Blessed Be.
Amen.
